John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath Chapters 26-30

Rose of Sharon looked at her in wonder.

She looked at the girl's face, and she smiled in triumph.

Al lunged suddenly, caught her by the ankle, and tripped her.

And in a moment she lay still, and in another moment they were giggling together in the dry grass.

"That kid says we was Okies," he said in an outraged voice.

The little girl went rigid for a moment, and then dissolved into sniffling, quiet crying.

The little girl went rigid for a moment, and then dissolved into sniffling, quiet crying.

The muddy water whirled along the bank sides and crept up the banks until at last it spilled over, into the fields, into the orchards, into the cotton patches where the black stems stood.

Casy stared blindly at the light.

Al pointed to a big nail protruding from the flat casing.

A wind, gentle and sighing, blew in puffs from the southwest, and the mountains on both sides of the great valley were indistinct in a pearly mist.

He wore a massive gold wedding ring on the third finger of his left hand.

The man ran his fingers through his coarse, short, graying hair.

"Well, there's plenty of work for you about forty miles north."

She babbled on.

Give me the stomach-quake."

The forenoon traffic on the highway increased, salesmen in shiny coupes with the insignia of their companies painted on the doors, red and white gasoline trucks dragging clinking chains behind them, great square-doored vans from wholesale grocery houses, delivering produce.

Looked like Happy Hooligan.

"Mus' be a wreck," Tom said.

The family came down from the top of the truck and looked about in bewilderment.

The two turned abruptly and walked away.

The pickers scurried about, filling their buckets from the branches, putting the peaches in the boxes, carrying the boxes to the checking station; and at the stations, where the piles of filled boxes waited for the trucks, clerks waited to check against the names of the pickers.

No bruised fruit, no windfalls.

Pa had followed docilely into the field.

He started to bluster.

Tom's eyes drooped sullenly.

The company's store was a large shed of corrugated iron.

Got to act flip, huh?"

"A fella got to eat," he began; and then, belligerently, "A fella got a right to eat."

The guard grunted contemptuously.

She pounced at Winfield and felt his hair.

Now he stood up and walked slowly to the right of the road, off into the stubble field, and he walked bent down, nearly as low as the haycocks.

Tom climbed a fence and moved down into the ravine through brush and dwarf willows; and in the bottom, beside a tiny stream, he found a trail.

A wizened little man with a wrinkled face slapped his knee.

An' then them vigilantes bust it up.

Casy groped outside and Tom followed him.

Get nervous," Casy reassured them.

He wrenched the club free.

Tom stood over the prostrate man.

He bent low and ran over the cultivated earth; the clods slipped and rolled under his feet.

The door squalled on its hinges.

At intervals he heard the footsteps of the watchmen.

Ruthie's body hurtled across the car.

A glow of light was on the camp, and the soft overtone of a multitude of speakers.

A skunk padded heavily and unself-consciously down the trail, carrying a faint effluvium with him.

Tom went on, "He spouted out some Scripture once, an' it didn' soun' like no hellfire Scripture.

For if they fall, the one will lif' up his fellow, but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.'

And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken.'"

He raised a delicately chiseled face.

A patina of silver beard covered his jaws and chin.

Woman, it's all one flow, like a stream, little eddies, little waterfalls, but the river, it goes right on.

She looked slowly at Al, who stood there flustered and embarrassed.

The inhabitants of the car came slowly to life, squirmed up out of the blankets, writhed into their clothes.

Al grumbled, "What we got to be up so early for?"

The line of people moved frantically across the field, weighed at the end, marked their cotton, checked the weights into their own books, and ran for new rows.

The big infrequent drops of rain lanced down and splashed on the road, and as the truck moved along, the drops became smaller and close.

The rain poured now, scoured at the roof of the car.

Then the cars wouldn't start because the wires were shorted; and if the engines would run, deep mud engulfed the wheels.

Then the sickness came, pneumonia, and measles that went to the eyes and to the mastoids.

And under the begging, and under the cringing, a hopeless anger began to smolder.

Ruthie and Winfield tried to play for a while, and then they too relapsed into sullen inactivity, and the rain drummed down on the roof.

Uncle John opened his mouth and rubbed his bristling chin.

Ruthie and Winfield went reluctantly down the car.

The rain had become intermittent now—little wet squalls and quiet times.

Ma slid down into the water, and for a moment her skirts billowed out around her.

Ma leaned forward and with her palm she brushed the tousled hair back from her daughter's forehead, and she kissed her on the forehead.